Governor Mark Dayton greets supporters after speaking about his proposed budget during a press conference at the Minnesota Department of Revenue in St. Paul, Minn., on Tuesday, January 22, 2013.
(Pioneer Press: Ben Garvin)

Gov. Mark Dayton’s proposal to raise more than $200 million per year for new bus and passenger rail services through a sales tax increase in the seven-county metro has given transit advocates hope, but even some die-hard fans of public transit say they’re hung up on two key questions.

First: Who will control the money?

Second: Will the east metro get its fair share?

Critics are grumbling that while Minneapolis has two passenger rail lines in operation, with three more on the horizon, St. Paul has one line in place — Amtrak. The Central Corridor Light Rail line, which connects the downtowns of St. Paul and Minneapolis, will join the fold next year.

Dayton’s transit proposal has won the early support of House and Senate transportation finance committee chairs, state Sen. Scott Dibble and state Rep. Frank Hornstein, both DFLers living in Minneapolis.

But state Sen. Bev Scalze, DFL-Little Canada, is among east metro lawmakers who say their communities are being left out. Too much of the proceeds will go toward west metro projects such as the proposed Southwest Light Rail Transit line from Minneapolis to Eden Prairie, she suggests.

“Why would I be in favor of more transit tax dollars that are simply going into new lines that feed into Minneapolis?” she said last week.

Matt Kramer, president of the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, raised similar concerns. While Minneapolis is poised to become a nexus of new passenger rail lines, many of the plans for St. Paul and the east metro call for new bus services.

Officials at St. Paul City Hall have been quieter publicly, but some are noting privately that Minneapolis someday could serve as the starting point for the Hiawatha, Southwest, Bottineau, Central Corridor and Northstar passenger rail lines, among other possible rail corridors. That leaves St. Paul with the Central Corridor Light Rail Transit line and Amtrak.

Prospects for additional passenger rail in the east metro, such as high-speed lines from the Union Depot to Chicago or the Red Rock commuter rail from the depot to Hastings, seem hazier. State officials have expressed concern that planned routes without sufficient ridership, population density and connections to “feeder” bus lines won’t score high on federal scorecards, limiting their likelihood of obtaining essential federal funding.

“The question is: How do we have a balanced approach, so it doesn’t get lopsided?” said Ramsey County Commissioner Rafael Ortega, who has been heavily involved in passenger rail and bus rapid transit discussions in St. Paul. “It has to be balanced for either the west or the east metro.”

‘LOCAL STUFF’

Concerns about the east metro getting overlooked in rail planning are overstated, said Peter McLaughlin, a Hennepin County commissioner who chairs the Counties Transit Improvement Board.

When Anoka, Dakota, Hennepin, Ramsey and Washington counties joined CTIB in 2008, they adopted a .25 percent sales tax, which raised $101 million last year for transit.

McLaughlin said CTIB’s first order of business was to help fund the Central Corridor, which should be running in 2014. “That first line that was funded by CTIB went to St. Paul,” McLaughlin said. “It was an essential line. We invested $270 million through CTIB. There is no Central Corridor without the CTIB sales tax.”

He also noted that, in many cases, communities such as West Seventh Street in St. Paul have rejected plans for passenger rail service, saying it would reduce parking, change traffic patterns and require heavy public subsidy. In Dakota County, the rapid bus line “on Cedar Avenue was the result of clear direction from Dakota County legislators a decade ago,” McLaughlin said. “They said they didn’t want a light rail. That was the absolute clear direction.”

He pointed out that the St. Paul City Council on Wednesday, Jan. 23, asked Ramsey County to study a possible transit corridor down West Seventh Street from the Union Depot to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America. A previous proposal fell apart in 2002 under neighborhood opposition, but city officials now envision a less obtrusive bus or streetcar service that operates in normal traffic instead of its own bus-only lane.

“Last time, it collapsed,” McLaughlin said. “It wasn’t an east-west thing. It was local stuff in St. Paul. It’s on the list as a corridor that’s going to get investment.”

WHOSE MONEY?

Once the money starts rolling in should the tax proposal pass, some lawmakers and county officials wonder which group would control it.

In 2008, the five metro counties adopted the CTIB tax, which added .25 percent to their sales taxes. Carver and Scott counties opted out.

If approved by state lawmakers, the additional .25 percent sales tax in Dayton’s proposal could be imposed — on all seven metro counties — by the state directly or through the Metropolitan Council, which oversees the Metro Transit system.

Met Council Chair Sue Haigh this week said she doubted any counties would be allowed to opt out of the tax this time. But particulars like that and governance remain to be worked out.

Skeptics worry state officials eventually could raid the additional $100 million raised by the tax for everyday Met Council operations or even a state expense completely unrelated to transit.

The governor’s proposal remains vague when it comes to protection of those tax proceeds, said Wayne Sandberg, Washington County’s deputy director of public works. Early on, the state used $30 million in CTIB dollars to help the Met Council balance its budget.

“The gas tax, for example, is constitutionally dedicated to roads,” Sandberg said. “The sales tax is ‘dedicated’ to transit, but it’s not protected by anything. So that has allowed the Legislature to come in and take $30 million and say we’re going to use this for something else. So what does the word ‘dedicated’ mean?”

Ortega, who represents Ramsey County on the CTIB board, has questions of his own. “I think the governance issue is going to keep rising,” he said. “The question is, what happens now with CTIB? You have pots of money that are now being put in different places. … The devil’s really in the details.”

Transit advocates say those details can be worked out, and there’s good reason to embrace the new tax. They point out that the federal government once covered 80 percent of the cost of new construction for major transit projects. That support has fallen to 50 percent, forcing state and local governments to prove they can cover the other half. A transit tax provides that proof, positioning the Twin Cities to be competitive with other regions, he said.

Meanwhile, whether the feds will continue to put in 50 percent of capital construction dollars is unknown.

“That’s what Central Corridor was,” McLaughlin said. “That’s been our working assumption on Southwest. Whether that’s going to be sustainable for future projects is not clear, because the number of projects across the country is growing, and federal resources are not growing. … Federal share in all likelihood is going to go down.”

Elizabeth Mohr contributed to this report. Frederick Melo can be reached at 651-228-2172. Follow him at twitter.com/FrederickMelo.

Frederick Melo came to the Pioneer Press in 2005 and brings an aggressive East Coast attitude to St. Paul beat reporting. He spent nearly six years covering crime in the Dakota County courts before switching focus to the St. Paul mayor's office, city council, and all things neighborhood-related, from the city's churches to its parks and light rail. A resident of Hamline-Midway, he is married to a Frogtown woman. He Tweets manically at @FrederickMelo

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